What’s in Store for Digital Experience Platforms, DevOps in 2022?

In 2022, digital experience platforms and DevOps environments will undergo changes in security, infrastructure and adoption.

If the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that some things are impossible to predict. Luckily, in the world of IT, predictions can come a little easier—especially when you’re an expert.

Some of our product marketers and DevOps pros outlined the major trends and changes they expect to see in 2022, from security and usability to skillsets and language. Read on to learn what 2022 has in store for developers, customers and organizations.

Global DXP Market Predictions

Terminology will get sorted (a bit)

The language of the analysts is starting to align, and the future of digital experience is becoming clearer. Terms such as composability and orchestration have been adopted readily by everyone who writes or talks about digital experience. Rather than jargon, these concepts are the natural progression of solutions that must be nimble in the adoption and integration of new tools and the distribution to new channels.

Anyone in the market for a DXP solution should pay attention, educate themselves, and read through entire analyst reports (not just the big graphic), understand what level of headless capability they need, and understand their options for scalability.

.NET Core will be part of every discussion

In 2022, .NET Core will be important for developers (not a huge risk, predicting this open-source Microsoft framework would get the attention of programmers). With it, developers can deliver their projects faster and across multiple platforms and devices. Influencers have spoken and they have been heard. Expect the advantages of .NET Core to show up in more discussions (and on more wish lists) as buyers are understanding the possibilities with this robust modern framework.

No Code/Low-code will get more attention

In today’s DXP market, API integration capability is essential, but it is no longer enough. Business users have become more sophisticated and expect to rely less on the DevOps teams. At the same time, developers are warming to the idea that ease of use shouldn’t just apply to the business user on the front end. Not all low-code options offer the flexibility that will satisfy a developer, but when it’s done right, it’s magic.

AI/ML will continue to normalize

What is not magic (but is still pretty great) is that real AI functionality is becoming accessible to everyone. As tagging of content became expected for content management. Customer Journey Mapping, central to any digital experience platform, is real and usable for 2022. It’s also an indication that buyers are getting educated and comfortable with advancing technology.

Security will be a big challenge

In 2022, we will see increases in the number of security breaches and cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure. Organizations will be targeted not only due to the amount of data they process, but also the value of that data. These organizations will struggle to balance maintaining a strong security posture and maximizing uptime. In addition, increased focus on integrating disparate corporate data assets while delivering a robust, human-centric experience will also add to the challenges faced by these organizations.

Network monitoring will become more thorough

We’re also still seeing an ongoing evolution from infrastructure-oriented monitoring to monitoring focused on end user and application experience (AX). Knowing that your servers are up isn’t good enough anymore; competitive organizations need to understand whether the services they’re providing are meeting the expectations of their end users. Now there is more of an emphasis on network traffic and application performance monitoring so that these organizations can determine if response times are meeting their SLAs—and get alerted immediately if they’re not.

A comprehensive network monitoring solution that can not only report the health of the network but also the health of the applications and traffic on that network is crucial. Putting it all in context so that administrators can easily determine the root cause of application slowdowns or traffic bottlenecks is the Holy Grail of the IT department.

DevOps Predictions

Increased adoption on Compliance as Code 

The threat landscape continues to evolve in tandem with hybrid workplace models. Yet, despite the shift to hybrid work and increased vulnerabilities, many organizations have not fully implemented compliance measures that meet the growing need for documentation or support automation’s role in enhancing security.

Policies need to be clear, especially as organizations continue to build out and expand their cloud resources. Security and compliance issues arise when policies are ambiguous and not clearly defined—policies should not be open to interpretation or unambiguous.

As CIOs and DevOps leaders enter 2022, development test environments will see an increase in adopting Compliance as Code. Enforcing policies that are testable, enforceable, shareable, trusted and actionable will be the top priority throughout the next year.

More traction on Policy as Code

We have seen IaC, i.e Infrastructure as Code and Compliance as Code, being viewed as first-class citizens in many organizations who have matured in the DevOps journey. As organizations move more workloads into the cloud, the need for security and compliance automation has accelerated.

IT teams must continuously deliver change in their technology environments while maintaining adherence to business policies ranging from governmental regulations to security best practices. Consequently, codifying policy to code or Policy as Code approach to automate the implementation, validation and governance of business policies will see traction.

“Policy as Code” has become a more reputable way for companies who need an agile way to continually modulate their security policies as a secure best practice. Its ability to provide specific compliance visibility and alignment for varying internal groups and practice requirements at scale make its adoption a high priority next year.

Attracting DevOps talent

The responsibility landscape for DevOps is ever-growing—leaving practitioners unsure if their current skill set matches an organization’s future need, and in turn, leaving many positions unfilled.

Upskilling is an investment that leaders need to implement as the expectations and responsibilities expand within developer roles, or they will be looking at a labor shortage for quite some time to come. In 2022, organizations will need to provide more supportive resources, like testing environments, for in-role learning that enables developers to train (and even fail) in a safe and protected environment.

DevOps seeks to align those teams that contribute to the production environment, so naturally, seek agile, integrative tools to decrease:

• Disparate skillsets in applications and code that create complexity.
• Expensive overhead and administrative cost. 
• License agreement alignment.

To accomplish this, customers will continue to look for ways to consolidate their tool sets and divert that expense towards investments in their workforce. They will either develop stronger internal talent or seek out the best talent that can take them to the next level.

Shifting left

Building strong, secure products throughout the software development life cycle requires continuous security integration in the delivery pipeline. Silos between developer, business development and testing teams continues to create gaps in the feedback loops leading to a slower product rollout. However, with the increased adoption of DevSecOps principles for continuous testing and deployment, teams across all business units should codify their shift left practices with automation and increase communication to reduce failure.

As organizations look ahead to 2022, automation will be a priority in maximizing shifting left principles and maintaining higher security standards. Building security into code during development and including initial verification runtime testing will be essential in realizing automation's contribution to workflow speed and product delivery velocity. 

Microservices and DevOps

Microservices and DevOps are not new concepts, and yet managing architecture, security and compliance remains a challenge. There are several layers to microservices and how they are managed with the deployment of automation. The first is container architecture, kubernetes and other services that create the challenge of managing architecture. The second is the posture of security, compliance and the governance of the container system.

As we look forward to 2022, more organizations will implement microservices and will need to keep the DevOps mentality top of mind to succeed. Microservices and DevOps will continue to converge and become more complicated to manage as time goes on with multiple layers of architecture.

The next year will bring exciting changes and new challenges to the IT landscape, setting the stage for new advancements and technologies going forward. Here’s to an engaging and rewarding 2022!